Charles O. Schwarz III: The inspiration was much more humble: milk crates. They're as simple and as inexpensive as it gets — pine boxes, all 24 by 14 inches, some with dividers, some without. The cabinetmaker whipped them up in his backyard, and we just piled them on the ledge. The knee-jerk solution would have been built-in shelves, but they would have been too constricting. My client collects a lot of stuff, so having this tumble of boxes that can be vertical or horizontal allows her to play around with the arrangement and change it as her collection changes.

Sounds like more fun than Tetris! You really went all-out with the red theme in here.

The intent was to make it cozy and barn-like. The house dates to around 1830, and this room was an addition, a garage that had been converted into a family room. It was cold and awful — white Sheetrock and a contemporary cathedral-ceiling look that was totally off-kilter with the rest of the house. We planked the walls, beaded the ceiling, and saturated the room in red.

I don't. And I wouldn't have saturated this one if the ceiling hadn't been so high. The red helped bring it down.

Do you often use red?

I've used it before in family rooms and dining rooms. People look good in red, and it makes you happy. It can also be dramatic and elegant.

There's a back-and-forth of reds and blues in all the public rooms.

Those two colors, in all of their various applications, originated with the red and blue of the bonad — a kind of vintage Swedish tapestry — that hangs over the mantel. Red and blue is a combination you often see in Swedish architecture. A lot of the artwork, furniture, and accessories in the house reflect the owner's Swedish heritage and her passion for the Scandinavian aesthetic.

There's a charm about the whole place that makes me think of a Carl Larsson painting.

You know what I think is so nice about it? It feels simple and very real. It's not chic or cutting-edge. I love that it relates to the outdoors. Most of the rooms have doors going outside, and her gardens are so magnificent that we did this entire bank of windows across a wall in the kitchen to take advantage of the view. It's the kind of thing that most people wouldn't go for. She was scared of it, too, at first, because she thought I was taking away too much wall space — she wouldn't be able to put cabinets there. But I said, 'The yard is too beautiful for a tiny window above the sink!' I also felt strongly that it shouldn't be a typical suburban kitchen with hanging cabinets and a large center island.

So then what did you do to solve the storage problem?

I was able to give her all the storage she needed with floor-to-ceiling cupboards in the narrow spaces on the two adjacent walls. That wall of windows really makes the kitchen.

And red windows, to boot. There they are again in the family room.

Yes, those windows have the same view as the ones in the kitchen do. The banquette under them runs the entire length of the room, about 16 feet. It accentuates the length of the window, and it gives her a place to lounge, a lot of extra seating, and a nice place to dine at the card table. She loves to entertain, and she's an avid cook. That's another thing that's great about the house — it has all these different choices for dining. There are four dining spots in the house, and two eating areas outside. The blue room, incidentally, is a breakfast room, but at night she'll have intimate dinners in there. It's really romantic with the candles flickering against the dark blue.

How did you make the color transitions from room to room so fluid and harmonious?

You know what I find interesting? You take these big houses, and you're trying to pull all these colors together, and all of a sudden it seems to fall into place in an organic way. There's a thread that runs through, a natural transition between the rooms. All the colors work together. The reason I find that interesting is because I sort of struggle with color.

You do? Why is that?

It's overwhelming. You start out by looking at a little paint chip, and then it ends up being this great big surface. And there are so many factors at play, like daytime light, nighttime light, summer light, winter light. There are a lot of colors I like, but it's hard to commit.

What about in your own home?

It's mostly whites and browns. I really like brown because it's consistent in all different kinds of light.